Milestones have meaning. Milestones cause us to pause and reflect. Ten years may seem so small for people who have graced the earth for so long like my ninety-five year old grandmother, but for someone my age, a decade is a big deal. This summer gives me the opportunity to recognize ten years since finishing undergraduate college. The great thing about my alma mater is that it schedules an alumni reunion weekend every summer. Class years celebrating special milestones organize a committee to plan extra reunion events to bring the cohort back to campus.
Even though the years between present day and college are ever increasing, I still talk about my experiences at college quite often. And since I am my mother's daughter, I have no idea how many times my husband has heard the same stories told over and over again. He has yet to complain, though. I asked him if he would like to go with me to my class reunion because I wanted him to be able to experience a little bit of that place so near and dear to my heart.
A lot can change in a decade, and while the campus of my alma mater may look somewhat different in some areas, it still feels like home. My husband's remarks about how small the campus seemed certainly gave me pause to stop and realize that it never felt that way while attending school. The walk through the main hall where classes were held and then peeking into one of the dormitories in which I lived was an entertaining trip down memory lane for me.
My husband was merely convinced all of the buildings were haunted, which to be fair, some of them do have stories. I usually win instant brownie points with middle and high school kids when I share with them that I lived in a haunted dorm in college. Honestly, I never truly believed in ghosts before my sophomore year in college. Entertained the possibility? Yes. Actual convictions? Not until fall semester 2001. While doing a quick walk sometime between midnight and 1 a.m. around Heffron Hall as the resident assistant on duty one night, I saw a shadowy figure on the third floor for which I have no explanation. I was so rattled that I actually skipped my last round of the night. My girlfriend, who also lived in the dorm that year, kindly reminded me this weekend of the night we tried to watch a movie. For some reason the VHS tape kept popping in and out of the VCR player on the television as the movie played. After some failed determination at getting it to work properly, and becoming increasingly spooked, we decided it was a good time to take a late-night walk around campus. Reunions are great for trips down memory lane because I had completely forgotten that incident. She and I would take a lot of midnight walks around campus that year and in the years that followed.
(For fans of ghost stories, there is an excellent series on the evolution of the Heffron ghost in the Winona Post written by a classmate's father, Patrick Marek: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7, Part 8 )
Coming back to see everyone again had a different feeling for me since I only had a roommate for one year. Working for the Office of Residence Life had its perks, but sometimes I wish I had had a few more roommates. That is, until I recall walking in on my freshman year roommate and her boyfriend getting frisky with each other. She apologized to me profusely, but I was never able to burn the vision of her boyfriend's butt cheeks from my retinas. So, no roommates can be a nice thing.
The years I spent in college really shaped me, but it was not always from positive experiences. There was a suicide in the dormitory my sophomore year, and I spent much of the next few months unable to shake a feeling of guilt for accepting my hall director's offer to check on a student, after having received a phone call from concerned friends, since I was just about to leave for the computer lab when my phone rang. It seems so silly now, but it was something I struggled with some months afterwards. I even had the displeasure of a good friend inexplicably stop talking to me senior year, to the point of not even saying hello back to me when we crossed paths in the plaza. While I never figured out what her motivation was and have not thought of it much since, explaining to my husband about with whom I socialized the most in college certainly brought back some less than pleasant memories. It was cute to see how he was ready to throw down the gauntlet in my honor after hearing about that for the first time.
My husband and I meandered into the history department to find a picture of another one of my history professors who passed away in 2011. It reminded me of some advice he gave me as I contemplated what to do after graduation. I was considering graduate school, but I had not decided on the program or the school yet. Dr. Gaut, who had attended the University of Minnesota graduate school, bluntly told me I would not fit in there. It irked me at first until I realized his implication was that I was not uppity enough the mesh with the attitudes of the people in that program. I am grateful he was so straightforward with me.
As a history undergraduate major at a small, Catholic university, there were a whopping five of us the year I graduated. For our senior thesis class, one of the five studied abroad fall semester. There was another classmate who only sometimes showed up for class. Needless to say, when there are only four students who should be there, the professor knows when you miss class. So, that meant we usually spent the first fifteen to twenty minutes talking baseball, since my professor was a huge New York Mets fan, as he waited to see if he would have three or four students for class that day. One does not find experiences like that at large universities.
After walking around the campus for a bit, my husband asked how we did not get bored. It is funny because, while I enjoyed my classes, most of my memories from college have to do with things outside of classes. We were always inventive with how we entertained ourselves. Perhaps that is part of the rite of passage into adulthood: learning to make one's own way in the world. As an underclassman, I was way too afraid to try things on my own without someone else there for moral support. As an upperclassman, I spent a lot of time eating on my own in dining halls while reading the newspaper or taking naps on some of the random couches around campus. I just no longer had that fear.
The education I received was certainly a good one. I was part of the Lasallian Honors Program as an undergraduate, which has helped shape how I teach by utilizing the Socratic method. As a sophomore, I spent time in the archives of the library translating an old book from German to English for a research paper on the 1410 battle of Grunwald. It was the first time I had encountered Fraktur print, so it took me quite some time as I had to decipher the old letter style. Needless to say, my professor had questions for me when I turned in a paper that included a book printed in German as a reference since German is not offered as a class at the university. I read Fraktur print on a regular basis now when researching 19th century education in Minnesota. My favorite class, though, was a public history class I took senior year taught by the director of the Winona County Historical Society. He took us on a walking tour of the city and went into great detail about some of the old buildings in town. As part of that class, we were required to volunteer time with WCHS. I helped out with the Victorian Fair that fall by teaching kids how to play marbles, which landed a girlfriend's and my picture on the front page of the Winona Daily News. I also worked the annual event Voices of the Past: Woodlawn Cemetery Walk, serving as a tour guide between the stations. Ten years later, I find myself starting my eighth summer season as a living history interpreter.
My path in life is not the same path as my classmates. That being said, it can be really difficult not to think the grass is greener on the other side when you hear about the accomplishments of so many. Some run their own businesses; others have earned doctorate degrees; while others yet have beautiful children of which they can be proud. Reunions can be fun to see where everyone has tread in life, but it can also certainly feed feelings of inadequacy for the things one still wants to accomplish in life. I have always been a late bloomer in life, though, so all in good time. Hopefully my husband was not completely bored out of his mind this weekend at our class gathering listening to me chat every now and then with people whom he does not know, but I am pleased that he got to see some of what shaped me into the person I was when he met me.
